Grammar and spelling nazi me

I do not know why, but these things bother me when I read them. I am not just talking about text messages on cellular phones — I understand that the medium itself is scarcely conducive to good writing (although I authorize anyone to slap me if they ever receive a text message from me containing any of the grammar mistakes or misspells listed below). I am talking about electronic mail messages, letters, blog posts, scientific preprints, CVs, internal departmental memos, and other (semi)official documents which eventually become part of public record.

In these cases, I think some minimal attention should be expected of the writer. Unfortunately, the more of these I encounter, the more I worry that they may display the same carelessness in other areas of relevance to me. And, while I am willing to cut some slack for the occasional poor grammar (it can happen), modern spell checkers make it difficult to forgive misspells.
So, these are my favorite grammar/spelling pet peeves (in parentheses the correct version):

10. Recieve(d) (received).

9. Wierd (weird)

8. Definately (definitely)

7. Accessable (accessible)

6. Belive (believe)

5. Independant (independent — I know, both dependant and dependent are acceptable, but only independent is correct. Hey, I did not make the rules…)

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This entry was posted on July 16, 2012 at 11:09 am and is filed under Miscellaneous, Silliness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Oh how I hate the misplaced apostrophe. In my kids’ daycare, they have these daily sheets where they list what the kids ate, when they slept, etc., and if they need more supplies.
One of the sheets says “Please bring more diaper’s; wipe’s, etc.” I feel little tremors of disgust every day.

Also, at my gym, there’s a board with various notices and weekly nutrition challenges. One week it said “Eat more egg’s”. Nobody noticed or nobody cared, and on day 3 I had to go and erase the mofo apostrophe… I got some weird looks.

Re Cherish’s comment — I am appalled by the fact that nobody at the elementary school corrected my eldest kid’s spelling. He’s very good now (starting 7th grade), but they stopped correcting spelling and basic grammar in 3rd or 4th grade, which is way too early.

And I second the above comment on the “despicable me” — some people are so terrified of using “me” that they indiscriminately use “I” even when it’s clearly inappropriate.